The Involuntary `Merits` Of Ceausescu

January 10, 1990|By Claude G. Matasa.

HOLLYWOOD, FLA. — One may think I am either crazy or a brain-washed Romanian Securitate agent.

I am neither. I could be, however, a well-fed, pampered Romanian-American who hasn`t heard yet about his massacred relatives and friends. Somebody far enough from the actual events, who, in his nice house and after a scrumptuous dinner, meditates on the destiny of his former homeland.

The reasons to hate dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his clan are now well known to the entire world. But Ceausescu`s involuntary merits are too important not to be revealed.

Due to his autocratic and cruel rule, the hideous face of communist dictatorsips and their dire consequences have been exposed. Many have seen the protest and mourning gatherings on television, but only a few have observed that some have equated him with Hitler. It is a mistake; Hitler was legally elected and succeeded to rally behind him the majority of the German nation.

Ceausescu has been hated from the grass roots up, even if the reasons were varied. With the exception of some brain-washed orphans raised by the Romanian KGB to worship him as father and God, the Romanian population in the latter years was entirely against him. Even the so-called ``Ceausescu loyalists`` who committed atrocities, killed indiscriminantly and destroyed blood banks were thugs fighting for their own lives, not to avenge him.

If they had been so trustworthy, why did Ceausescu surround himself with mercenaries from Libya and Iran? The Securitate groups are no more

``loyalists`` or patriots than the Ton Ton Macoutes were in Haiti.

Why thank Ceausescu, then? Because, I hope, he has been an example of how far a dictatorship can go and what can be done in the name of the people and communist ideology. His excesses have produced a revolution that is determined to remove not only the remnants of an odious past but also its roots.

Ceausescu has forced Romania to leap over several stages in the transition from a communist dictatorship to a true democracy. He made any compromise with communism unpopular. A recent joke asks what the political difference is between the U.S.A. and Romania. The answer: The U.S.A. still has a Communist Party.

Romania may provide sad but necessary food for thought, serving as an example of how crowds deal with those who for years oppressed them. ``Mild``

revolutions do not devour their children, but unaccomplished upheavals leave behind enough poison to paralyze the system.

I doubt that in some other Eastern European countries, changes of party names or emblems or addition of non-communist ministers and other superficial measures will erase more than 40 years of abuses. The suffering of tens of thousands of political prisoners and their families cannot be so easily appeased. Neither will those who were killed for their aspirations rest in peace because of cosmetic improvements.

Romanians have been pushed too far and this has brought a violent reaction exacting a high price. But this may also have created a self-purifying society, more sensitive to the dangers menacing democracy. Without Ceausescu, Romania would have basked in a lukewarm pseudo-reformism and lost precious years in its efforts to achieve a better and more fulfilling life.